Mariage and Children

Challenges of Marriage With Children

The hard truth is that a large proportion of people find that children create a significant amount of stress in their relationship, particularly when the kids are young.

According to researcher Matthew Johnson of Binghamton University in his book, Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex, and Marriage, research shows that this is commonplace. There is also a decrease in relationship satisfaction following the birth of the first child.

This dip in happiness doesn’t go away until after children leave the nest, and by that time, many couples have divorced or drifted apart. Here are some more specifics:

• Children add stress to a marriage and marital satisfaction decreases sharply when kids become part of the relationship.2 Interestingly, this also happens to unmarried couples, so marriage itself is not the culprit in relationships that go stale.
• Children create stress for parents as individuals, as well as the couple as a unit. Perhaps not surprisingly, mothers take on the lion’s share of childcare in most relationships. Also not surprisingly, this stress hits mothers in particular pretty hard.3 Most women’s other relationships deteriorate to a degree as their bond with their children grows stronger.
• The stress of children is universal.4 It’s not isolated to certain social classes or even to specific countries or regions of the world.

Top Relationship Stressors for Parents

There are many factors that go into this dip in satisfaction, and they are not the same for everyone. However, certain stressors are particularly taxing on a relationship and an individual. The following stressors are particularly challenging.

Less Time Together

Because of the intensive caretaking required and the fact that any alone time that occurs during the baby’s waking hours requires the use of a sitter, couples naturally find themselves with less time to spend together. They usually have less energy to devote to one another when they do find the time as well.5